AM2 AMD socket.

General wisdom is that while AM2 and 939 aren't a revolutionary increase in performance, the 754 processors are now older technology. If you plan to upgrade to a faster speed processor two years down the road, you won't have good choices unless you buy AM2 now.

Of course, two years down the road you'll probably be buying a new motherboard/processor combo anyway.

Personally, I'm waiting for 939 processors to dominate, then I'll buy a quality mobo for the older 754 processor, and scoop up as much performance as I can with the older platform while I wait a year or two to invest in something with multiple cores.

(edit... for some reason I was calling the 754 cores 738... doh!)

Of course, two years down the road you'll probably be buying a new motherboard/processor combo anyway.

Yes, thats my point. When i build a pc i always buy a new MB, and since the conversion to DDR2 supposidly doesn't do much as far as a performance increase is concerned, at least from what i've heard, then i dont need to buy it. Especially when I allready have very good expensive DDR1 ram for my old computer.

That is what i was thinking, 939 and am2 are probably the same. Probably have to wait a year for the new AMD core to come out.

according to AMD the whole reason they waited so long to make the switch to DDR2 is that because of their more efficient use of bandwidth (compared to intel for example who just eats it up) they only expect a 1% improvement in performance using DDR2 over DDR.... the only reason they are switching now is because DDR2 is comming in a year DDR1 would be obsolete and no one would be making any (so it will be more expensive yet lower quality, like non DDR sdram is today).

Esentially there is never a point to plan on "upgrading" your CPU later on... because you are better off getting a new MB-CPU-RAM combo. So just get whatever is in your budget range and a year or two from now do the same again.

I believe ASRock boards support both 939 and AM2(with ddr2), via a expansian board, adds a lot more life to your mobo.

Here is an exerp from firing squad:

AMD’s relied on DDR400 to carry them for three years now. DDR400 has served AMD well over this time, but it’s definitely beginning to show signs of age. DDR memory consumes more power than DDR2, and just flat out doesn’t have the frequency headroom that DDR2 has. When DDR2 was initially released, AMD stuck with DDR400 as it was more widely available, and thus cheaper than DDR2. Early DDR2 modules also shipped at higher latencies and clock speeds that weren’t much greater than the fastest DDR modules of the time – the performance advantage just wasn’t there. Of course, it also didn’t hurt that by sticking with DDR400, it kept infrastructure costs down either. The memory market is completely different today however. DDR2 modules sell for the same price, if not lower than equivalent DDR modules, while the latencies of newer DDR2 modules are lower than before. The latest DDR2 modules run at higher speeds as well, the 800MHz DDR2 memory in today’s latest AM2 processors provides up to 12.8GB/sec of peak memory bandwidth, that’s twice the bandwidth of the DDR400 memory found in the latest Athlon 64 processors. The added bandwidth provided by DDR2 is going to play an increasingly important role as AMD cranks up the clock speed of their processors, and as more processor cores are integrated onto the CPU’s die.

Here is the whole article if you want to read it:

Link

Most reviews agree that there is little reason to buy AM2 at this point. The performance difference is 5% or less. If you really need to upgrade now, save some money and buy 939 especially if your next upgrade will include a MB change.